Phantoms of Fall (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 2)

by Joy Elbel

  “I don’t like what he’s been doing—all the fights, I mean—but I still think Zach is a good boy at heart. Have you talked to him about how you feel?” Shelly squeezed my hand lightly. “Relationships require open communication, you know.”

  “I know—but it’s too late now.” I should have talked to Shelly about it a long time ago. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in. But I didn’t and I couldn’t go back in time to change things now. Shelly was just about to impart more words of wisdom when the phone rang.

  “That’s probably the school calling—you basically ditched class, didn’t you?” Shelly said as she made her way to the phone.

  Oh no. I hadn’t even thought of that! Now I was probably in a lot of trouble, too. The minute she picked up the phone, though, I knew she had my back. Whoever was on the other side of the line sure got an earful about what Misty did to me to cause the whole thing in the first place. By the time she was finished with them, they were apologizing to her. Way to go Shelly!

  “Well,” she said as she hung up the phone, “They’re going to try to figure out where the video originated from—at least they have a limited suspect pool, though. There were only a few girls in the locker room that day so it shouldn’t be too hard to trace it back. In the meantime, I told them you would be out of school for the rest of the week until the drama settled down.”

  Thank God for Shelly! I didn’t want to go back ever but a few days were better than nothing. With a hug, I thanked her for everything.

  “You’re welcome, Ruby. But you still need to talk to Zach. I wish I could take care of that for you, too, but I can’t.” “It’s too late for that, Shelly! I missed my chance and our moment is gone.” The full effect of not being with him ever again was finally hitting me. He would never forgive me for leaving him when he needed me the most. Rachel would probably be mad at me, too. I was even more alone now than when I arrived in Charlotte’s Grove. There was nothing worse than having everything and then losing it all because of your own dumb stupidity.

  “He loves you Ruby—you at least need to try. But you have to let him know that his recent behavior is totally unacceptable.”

  But what good would it do to get him back? Garnet would just keep on hurting him and if not her, then it would be the next ghost that came along. I couldn’t let that happen—he was far too precious to me. The best thing for him was to not be with me. The hollow feeling once limited to my chest engulfed my entire body now and I knew that without him I would never feel whole again. But I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness to keep him safe. Unlike me, he still had a shot at having a normal life. He would forget about me in time, get married, have kids and never look back. As for me, I would love him until the day I died. Based on what I knew about the afterlife, probably even longer than that.

  Knowing that I couldn’t fully explain it all to Shelly, I told her I would try and left it at that. Worried about how much trouble he got into, I considered texting Rachel to get the answer. No. I had to stay away from him, stay out of his life so he could move on. He was impossible to forget but I had to at least try not to think about him. Easier said than done.

  He was first and foremost in my thoughts at any given moment. There wasn’t a single aspect of my life that didn’t remind me of him in one way or another. As I walked out to Shelly’s car so she could take me to my doctor’s appointment, I stared woefully at my own car. How mad would my parent’s be if I demanded a new car so soon, one that wasn’t a carbon copy of Zach’s?

  Even the waiting room at the doctor’s office reminded me of him. A bouquet of roses in a vase on the table made me think of the night he left that rose on his pillow for me. Getting over him was going to be impossible. I wanted to cry so I snatched a magazine from the table and hid my face behind it. What if I never got over him? What if I spent the rest of my life regretting my decision today? Why did he have to be so damned unforgettable anyway?

  Shelly did most of the talking during the exam, only making me speak enough to tell the doctor what my symptoms were. Now that my heart was demolished, my stomach seemed fine by comparison. The doctor decided to send me for some tests and the exam was over. Not as bad as I was expecting, I guess. But as I hopped down from the exam table, Shelly brought up the dreaded subject that I assumed she would drop now that Zach and I were history.

  “Oh, could you also write Ruby a prescription for birth control. You can never be too careful with a seventeen year old daughter.”

  “How true! Jason called over to remind me in case you forgot.” She scribbled something on her prescription pad and handed it directly to me. “We’ll start you out with this and see how it works. If you have any problems, just call me.”

  I stared at the piece of paper dumbly. It was nothing but chicken scratch—how in the world could anyone look at it and decipher anything intelligible? It didn’t really matter anyway—I wasn’t going to need it. Smiling at the doctor, I folded it, stuffed it into my pocket, and walked away.

  In the car, Shelly announced that we would be heading home after one quick stop. After everything I’d been through this morning, she thought it wouldn’t hurt to wait one more day to go to the hospital for the tests.

  “All we need to do is stop off at the pharmacy so we can get your prescription and then we can head home—I promise.”

  What? Wasn’t she listening when I told her that Zach and I were done, through, over, no longer together? Perhaps she needed me to get out my thesaurus so I could make the picture even clearer.

  “I don’t need it, Shelly. For real. We can go straight home now.” She stopped the car in the pharmacy parking lot anyway, but I remained buckled into my seat.

  “No, Ruby. You and Zach fought before and got back together—I want to make sure you’re ready for it when it happens. I was your age once. I know how emotional reuniting can be. Are you really going to sit there and tell me that if you guys made up tonight and he wanted to have sex that you’d say no?”

  My lips parted in protest and then I changed my mind. I could never get back together with Zach but Shelly would never understand why. “Fine. We’ll get the stupid pills and I’ll take the stupid pills. But it’s a stupid waste of our stupid time.”

  Shelly laughed. “Now, that’s better! Come on in with me—it won’t take long.” I dragged my soulless body out of the car. It’s not like I had anything better to do—today or any day for the rest of my life, for that matter. At least not without Zach, anyway. We waited on the bench while the pharmacist waved his magic wand over the prescription to make it readable. Ten minutes later, I had birth control I didn’t need burning a hole through my bag. It was kind of like buying an umbrella after you moved to the desert—completely and utterly useless.

  No one tried to contact me all day. Nothing from Rachel, nothing from Zach. It stung, but it was for the best. I would still have to see them in school, of course, but a clean break was what I needed. Clean break. Zach’s broken arm was all I could see when I closed my eyes. I never wanted to see him in pain—let alone pain that I caused. Garnet. I would have to use this week off from school to research her death. How could she do this to me—to him—and why? She committed suicide so the only person she should have been mad at was herself. Unless...what if she didn’t take her own life, what if someone took it for her? If that was the case, her killer could still be alive and living in Charlotte’s Grove. I had a horrible feeling that things were about to get even more dangerous than they already were.

  20. Questions That Can’t Be Answered, Answers That Shouldn’t Be Questioned

  Garnet Hartley. I typed her name into the box and clicked on the search button. What came up were lots of websites that sold jewelry and several women named Garnet with different last names. She died over twenty years ago so I knew it was a long shot, but it didn’t stop me from being disappointed when I didn’t find anything relevant. I was hoping to avoid it, but time in the library archives seemed like the only option. The library was clo
sed by now so it went straight to the top of my list of things to do tomorrow. So that made two things on my to-do list—tests at the hospital and digging through newspapers. Tomorrow was going to be sooo much fun.

  When Dad found out about the video Misty had taken of me, he nearly went through the roof. After everything else that happened, that video wasn’t nearly as important to me as it should have been. I couldn’t sit there and listen to him go on about it, so I took a plate of food upstairs with me so I could eat dinner alone. I use the term “eat” loosely—very loosely. After twenty minutes of pushing my chicken and mashed potatoes around and around on the plate, I dumped them into the garbage. My stomach was already sensitive to begin with—and now without Zach, I could find no pleasure in the world. All jokes about Shelly’s cooking aside, everything tasted like cardboard.

  Have you ever felt such profound sadness that you were beyond crying? I never knew it was a possibility—until now. Tears couldn’t do justice to the gaping void that was once my soul. Without Zach, my world ceased to exist. I floated through the hours, the minutes, the seconds, enshrouded in a black cloud of despair. Everything that made me who I was was gone now—because everything that made me who I was, lived inside of him. Curling up into a tight ball on my bed, I let the darkness envelop me.

  I lay there for hours steeped in misery, watching as the sun went down and the room crept into darkness. Not asleep but something other than awake, I sealed myself inside a tomb of my own thoughts. Memories of each moment I spent with him taunted me. Such happiness! How could it be broken down into nothing so easily, reduced to ash and carried off in the autumn breeze until it was no longer recognizable? Until I was unrecognizable even to myself. A knock on the door was the only thing that reminded me that there was a world outside of my own. A world that somehow carried on like nothing was wrong.

  “Ruby, can I come in?” Shelly’s voice came to me muffled from the hallway. “Yeah,” I replied. The word stuck in my throat the first time so I was forced to repeat it. “Yeah,” I called again, this time finding enough volume to be heard.

  I unfurled from my self-made cocoon and reached for the light as Shelly walked in. She took a seat beside me on the bed and rubbed my back with her hand.

  “Diane just stopped by. She wanted you to know how Zach’s doing.” I wanted Shelly to tell me that Zach was here, that he couldn’t bear the physical pain of our separation any longer and came to repair our broken romance. But apparently a visit from his mother was the best I was going to get. Emotionless, I waited for Shelly to tell me what she said.

  “Zach’s arm is broken and his neck is sprained. He’ll be in a neck brace for a few weeks, a cast for six. He was in a lot of pain, but they gave him something to help him rest. As far as the fight goes, Ryan has a broken nose and a broken jaw and Zach is suspended from school until further notice. The school board meets in two weeks and they will determine whether or not he is kicked out of school permanently.”

  Shelly’s words hit me like a swift kick in the gut. If Zach got kicked out of school, how would he get into a good college—or any college for that matter? He worked so hard toward his dream to be a veterinarian. Thinking that he might lose that—that made me want to cry. It was weird that I could produce tears for what he lost but not for what I did. His future was far more important to me than my own.

  I nodded my head to acknowledge that I heard her, but that was all I could manage. The thought of my once invincible Norse god lying alone and broken in his bed made me sick inside. If I could only go to him and explain what happened. If I could just hold him until his pain melted away. But I couldn’t. If I didn’t distance myself from him, things would only get worse for both of us. Garnet could take her anger out on me all she wanted to—but Zach, Zach she couldn’t have. I would protect him even if I had to die in the process.

  Shelly simply watched me with a hopeless look on her face. She could deal with my tears but my unresponsiveness seemed to confound her. She probably expected me to ask if he wanted to see me or if he asked about me in any way and when I didn’t she said it anyway.

  “Zach would like to know who pushed him down the stairs—he told his mother that you saw who it was.” Of all the questions he could want me to answer, he picked the one that I never could. He probably thought it was Ryan or one of his friends—I’m sure that a ghost was the last suspect on his list. I had to deny any knowledge of who sent him flying down that staircase. He knew I had the answer—I was staring straight at her when she unleashed her fury. Our entire relationship came down to one last lie. The last lie I would ever tell him. The lie that would forever keep him safe.

  Shaking my head firmly from side to side, I said, “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.” This last lie felt feeble and transparent. Kind of like me.

  Shelly’s sixth sense kicked in. “Are you sure about that? He was adamant that you would be able to provide the answer.” She gave me that look. The one that said “I know you’re lying but I haven’t figured out why but sooner or later I will”.

  Try harder this time. Try harder to convince her. I willed myself to appear more confident in the delivery of the lie. “Positive. It all happened so fast and we were arguing at the time. One minute he was on the top step and the next he was plunging down the stairs toward me. I didn’t see anyone else.”

  “Operation Convince Shelly I Wasn’t Hiding Anything” seemed to be successful. She gave me a weak smile and stood up.

  “Okay…are you sure you don’t want to go see him? He’s probably asleep right now, but I don’t think Diane would mind. I could go with you if you want….”

  It took an enormous amount of self-control for me to say no but I managed to do it. “It’s over between us. I hope he feels better soon but I don’t want to see him.” It wasn’t a total lie. I finished the sentence in my head to echo the full truth. I don’t want to see him get hurt because of me ever again—I love him too much for that.

  Shelly looked totally confused but walked away without another word and left me alone to drown in my own misery again. Misery was something I was getting pretty good at. I’d almost perfected it to an art form. But like any good artist knows, practice makes perfect. Every day of the rest of my life would be a lie in that I would have to keep pretending that I didn’t love him. It was time to start that journey. I turned out the lights and withdrew from the world again. Day one of life without Zach was drawing to a close. Day one of the rest of my life.

  It was late when I finally fell asleep but early when I awoke. The first rays of morning light filtered through the curtains casting a rosy hue across the room. I enjoyed that light every other morning, but today it might as well have been shades of gray. All five of my senses seemed dulled like I was only half alive. Too bad that sixth sense of mine was still sharply focused. Garnet Hartley was waiting for me— hopefully not literally—at the library and I was eager to meet her. While chasing Scarlet was far from a treat, at least she kept her ghostly paws off of Zach. After what she did yesterday, my beef with Garnet turned personal. She had no right to hurt him and I was determined to banish her swiftly. I didn’t care where I would be sending her, I just knew that she needed to be sent away and I wanted to be the one to do it.

  I rolled out of bed and into the shower. Even the warmth of the water that was usually so soothing couldn’t break through my icy wall of gloom. Would it get better in time? Would I find joy in anything ever again? When Lee died, I was sad for months but I never quite reached the bottom of the pit. Now, not only was I at the bottom of the pit, I was digging furiously to make it deeper. My lowest of lows had to be proportionate to the celestial highs I reached while I was with him. For me, there was a lot more digging to do.

  Shelly stopped me as I trudged toward the front door to remind me to be home by one o’clock so she could take me to the hospital for my tests. But that wasn’t the only reason she stopped me.

  “Ruby, I know you’re still upset about your fight with Zach yesterday
, but I’m worried about you. I’ve seen you sad before, but there’s something in your eyes that’s different this time. Or actually, it’s like there isn’t anything in there at all. Maybe if you went to see him….”

  Quickly, I cut her off. “I don’t want to see him. Period. End of story.” I grabbed my keys from the stand near the door. “I’m heading to the library.” I slammed the door behind me to deny her the opportunity to reply.

  When I got to the library, I forced a smile and said hello to the librarian Mrs. Tuttle. Her reply? A cranky, mumbled “Hello,” followed by “Where’s Zach?” as she peered over her bifocals to look for him.

  Zach was the fire, the spark that gave me life. A spark I would never have again and something seemed to remind me of that everywhere I went. I wasn’t about to reveal the sordid details to the Crypt Keeper behind the desk, so I told her he was at school and walked toward the periodical section. She mumbled something to the effect that I should be there too, but I pretended that I didn’t hear her. I wasn’t in the mood for attitude.

  Even though it was a crisp fall morning outside, the temperature inside the library was a thousand degrees as usual. I removed my jacket and slung it over the back of a chair and sat down. Time to put Garnet back into her grave for good.

  Funding for the library must be practically nonexistent in Charlotte’s Grove because archived newspapers here were still stored on microfiche instead of discs. It was a good thing I learned how to use the ancient machine over the summer because without Zach, I wasn’t sure Mrs. Tuttle would be very willing to help me. I found the paper for November 1st, 1990 and popped it into the viewer.